Georgi Dimitrov

Georgi Mikhailovich Dimitrov (18 June 1882-2 July 1949) was Prime Minister of Bulgaria from 23 November 1946 to 2 July 1949, succeeding Kimon Georgiev and preceding Vasil Kolarov. He led the Comintern from 1934 to 1943, and he was known as a theorist of capitalism who argued that fascism was the dictatorship of the most reactionary elements of financial capitalism.

Biography
Georgi Mikhailovich Dimitrov was born in Kovachevtsi, Bulgaria in 1882, and he became a printer and followed his father and brothers into trade union activity. In 1902, he joined the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party, which he left in 1903 to join a more radical movement which later became the Bulgarian Communist Party. After completing an eighteen-month jail sentence, he left for Moscow, where he was promoted to become an effective Communist Party leader. He returned to lead the abortive 1923 uprising against King Boris III of Bulgaria. As head of the Bulgarian sector of the Comintern in Berlin from 1929, he was accused of responsibility for the Reichstag fire, but was acquitted after conducting a brilliant defense. He spent World War II in Moscow, and he returned to Bulgaria after the end of the war to become head of the provisional government. He created a legal and constitutional framework which led to the establishment of the Bulgarian People's Republic in 1946. His ruthless policies of sovietization were an important contributor to the subsequent servility of the country to the Soviet Union. By contrast, his unrealistic plan for a federation of Balkan states collapsed when Yugoslavia broke with the USSR in 1948. Dimitrov died in office a year later.